ROCKFORD - Two of the bridges that make up the Whitman Street interchange will need to be replaced in the next five or six years.

The question now is how to replace them.

The interchange, a monument to 1960s road engineering, is outdated and comprised of a web of neighborhood and state roads, one-ways, bridges and ramps just north of downtown.

The state refuses to put any money into the interchange because it's not up to today's design standards. So if Rockford officials want to keep the interchange as it is, the city will be on the hook for the $4 million cost of replacing the two bridges.

Or, the city can revamp it entirely, getting rid of the bridges, ramps and one-ways to make it an intersection like any other. The estimated price tag: $15.5 million.

The city could then try for state and federal funding to help pay for the project. But aldermen haven't yet approved the revamp to the city's rolling five-year capital improvement plan. The proposed plan, which includes the complete overhaul of the Whitman interchange, is before the city's Finance and Personnel Committee and could come to a vote any time over the next three weeks on the City Council floor.

Ald. Tom McNamara, D-3, wants to keep the overhaul project on the city's wish list and instead pay for the new bridges and prioritize the rest of the money for other needs, namely, neighborhood road repairs.

"The Whitman interchange is a 90-second inconvenience, not a $15 million problem," McNamara said. "It's a want, not a need."

But the city does need to convert Chestnut Street to two-way to open up access to downtown's future indoor sports complex, McNamara said. That costly project is not on the proposed five-year plan.

Capital programs manager Patrick Zuroske warns against investing $4 million into the Whitman bridges only to eventually demolish them someday down the line.

"If we continue to live with Whitman as it is, we will have to take money out of our capital program continuously to repair it," Zuroske said. "We'd have to pay $4 million and still not solve the existing geometric issues. We'd be stuck with the same 1960s configuration, and we don't get to make that important direct connection from the west side to SwedishAmerican Hospital."

The current configuration also requires much more concrete to be maintained and plowed. It's almost impassable to pedestrians and cuts off the neighborhoods on Rural Street with those near Illinois 251.

If the five-year plan is passed out of committee Monday and approved soon by the full City Council, work on Whitman could start by 2017, Zuroske said.